On this unusually steamy day in
late May, Makoto Watanabe is frantic. In less than twenty-four hours the
Emperor and Empress of Japan will leave from Tokyo's Haneda Airport to begin a
twelve-day official tour of Brazil and Argentina. Watanabe perches restlessly
on the edge of an overstuffed chair covered in gold cloth. His secretary brings
in green tea, served in blue-and-white china cups embellished with
chrysanthemums, the imperial symbol. The phone rings, and Watanabe races across
the office. "Yes, yes—morning coats," he says. In a moment the phone rings
again. This time Watanabe goes over the details of a speech that Emperor
Akihito is to deliver.

A thoughtful man whose profile is one of attenuated sharp angles, Watanabe is
the grand chamberlain—perhaps Akihito's closest adviser. He is also a courtier
who seems to be perennially caught in the middle as Japan's imperial system—a
system at once delicate and durable—is pulled this way and that by the
conflicting forces at work in Japan as a whole.

Watanabe's pedigree is impressive. His great-grandfather was the imperial
household minister from 1910 to 1914. His father, a onetime count, was a
playmate of Akihito's father, Emperor Hirohito. Watanabe began his career, in
1959, as a diplomat in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. His first palace job
was as grand master of ceremonies. In this position he handled the royal
couple's official international trips, oversaw some thirty court musicians, and
took diplomats and politicians on palace-sponsored duck-netting and
cormorant-fishing expeditions. The Emperor and Empress personally approved him
for his current job in 1996.

Watanabe's life is tightly intertwined with that of the imperial couple. Most
days he is by their side at 9:00 A.M., attending Shinto ceremonies or official
audiences for, say, principals of junior high schools or participants in the
Special Olympics. Some nights there are banquets for visiting heads of state.
Watanabe is privy to the most mundane details of palace life. At the outset of
one interview he fretted about the Empress's affliction with a form of herpes
that was causing pain in her shoulder.

The imperial chamberlains, of whom the grand chamberlain is the chief, are part
of an inner circle of palace bureaucrats, or oku, who work closely with
the Japanese royal family. Until the 1970s, when the government decided that
morning coats and automobiles would be more appropriate, the chamberlains wore
white robes and rode in horse-drawn carriages to pray at the palace shrines.
Together with the omote—the administrative courtiers who serve as
liaisons with cabinet officials, ministries, and other agencies—they make up
the Imperial Household Agency, a secretive bureaucracy that wields enormous
control over the affairs of the imperial family. The friction between the
oku and the omote has long been fodder for Japan's tabloid press.
The strife is real, engendered in part by differences in the roles and
perspectives of the two groups. On one occasion when I spoke with Watanabe, he
stressed the urgency of fixing a "communication problem" with the
omote.

The courtiers of Japan's royal house did not need the death of Princess Diana
last year, and the anti-monarchical sentiment amid the mourning that ensued, to
remind them that modern monarchies can be fragile institutions, venerable but
also buffeted by the crosswinds of the moment. "Emperor Akihito realizes that
the greatest challenge for a monarchy in a democratic society is simply to
survive," a senior Japanese palace official said to me recently. But how
to survive? Behind the walled, moated perimeter of the Emperor's 285-acre
palace grounds, an island of luxuriant foliage and delicious air amid Tokyo's
congestion, courtiers like Watanabe endlessly and inconclusively search for a
response to that challenge.

Think of the imperial grounds as a splendid but secluded village. The Imperial
Household Agency headquarters, a European-style structure built in the 1930s,
is the town hall. To one side is the palace, rebuilt in 1968, with traditional
Japanese-style patinaed-bronze roofs and elegant formal rooms. Some distance
away is the two-story modern home of Emperor Akihito, Empress Michiko, and
their unmarried twenty-nine-year-old daughter, Princess Sayako. It consists of
sixty-two rooms (many reserved for official use) laid out around a garden.
Dispersed around the grounds are shrines, archives, a hospital, and a silkworm
nursery. On a stroll one encounters the occasional volunteer group, its members
bent and wrinkled, dutifully sweeping leaves. Smartly dressed men and
kimono-clad women arrive in tour buses for audiences with the Emperor. But
mostly there is silence.

There are the purists, who subscribe to the view of monarchy articulated for
Britain in the late nineteenth century by the political writer and
Economist editor Walter Bagehot: royalty must remain cloaked in mystery
and magic. They shun talk of more frequent and less formal imperial outings. By
scripting press conferences, limiting photographs, and assuming personal
responsibility for royal foibles, the purists seem intent on purging the
imperial family of its humanity and individuality. They cherish a vision of
Japanese monarchy that the public is becoming increasingly disinclined to
accept.

Then there are the more forward-looking courtiers, who are busy studying the
King of Thailand's development projects and the Belgian monarchy's involvement
in trade missions. They want to give Japan's Emperor a more activist role.
Members of this group are desperately searching for a modern theme that would
solidify public support. "Strong ideological opposition to the monarchy has
weakened in recent years," says one senior courtier. "But now we have a new
problem: there is an increase in the number of people who don't feel they need
the system. And the monarchy hasn't been made meaningful to the younger
generation."

This attitude could emerge more powerfully in the event of significant
provocation. Imagine, for a moment, that Princess Masako, the Harvard graduate
and onetime diplomat who married Crown Prince Naruhito in 1993, does not
produce an heir. This is a real possibility, after five years of childless
marriage and, apparently, a dutiful effort to conceive. If the Crown Prince,
now thirty-eight, dies without issue, his brother, Prince Akishino, thirty-two,
will be next in line to the throne. But after him? So far Akishino has fathered
only daughters, and an 1889 law limits succession to a male. Some courtiers,
albeit off the record, argue in favor of changing that law. To amend it,
however, would require approval by the Diet, or parliament. This would in all
likelihood entail a wrenching debate about the meaning of monarchy. The
Japanese people would come face to face with the fact that the throne reflects
their society all too well. It is built of awkward compromises sustained by
administrative inertia. It is an expression of Japan's muddled nationalism.

THERE seems to be no definitive textbook on the management of monarchy, but if
a recent analysis in Britain's Financial Times is any guide, the
Japanese have done well with some of the basics. Japan's royal family is for
the most part morally upright, so far as is known. Its members are discreet
with regard to the media. They stay far away from politics. (Japan's 1947
constitution prohibits political involvement by the Emperor.) The royal family
lives elegantly but not ostentatiously.

Japan's imperial system is not cheap, however. Including salaries for some
1,150 imperial employees (administrators, cooks, gardeners, musicians,
scholars, financial managers, servants) and for 970 palace police officers, the
total annual bill is around $200 million. Japan's royal family owns neither the
ground on which the imperial palace sits—which during the real-estate boom of
the late 1980s was reported to be worth as much as the entire state of
Florida—nor any of the almost ten square miles of property, including farms,
burial grounds, and outlying villas and palaces, that have been designated by
the government for the court's exclusive use. The Emperor is, in effect, a
glorified salaryman, paid a yearly tax-free stipend of about $2.4 million. A
portion of that, perhaps a third, goes to support certain staff members in the
Emperor's personal employ—assistants for his private research on gobiid fish,
for example. Daily living expenses for Empress Michiko and Princess Sayako, for
the Crown Prince and Crown Princess, and for the Emperor's aged mother also
come out of the Emperor's stipend. Several additional households that belong to
the imperial family are given their own tax-free stipends, generally about
$220,000 a year.

With the nation straining under a huge budget deficit and serious economic
malaise, some courtiers worry that the royal family will be accused of not
earning its keep. Of course, bean counting misses the point. In Japan, as in
Britain, the monarchy serves as the repository of the nation's traditions. "We
have a two-thousand-year history," Satoshi Takishima, who until recently ran
the palace's tombs division, once told me by way of explaining his visceral
resistance to innovation. "We are not in the habit of changing things." Another
courtier underscored the point by invoking a mystical simile: "The Emperor
system is like air, not something somebody made."

The truth is, however, that many of the traditional trappings of the Japanese
throne, from archaic-looking Shinto wedding ceremonies to the design of some of
Japan's most sacred shrines, were purposely created by Japan's governing elite
as a way to unify the populace after the Meiji Restoration of 1868. This event,
which ended two and a half centuries of feudal rule, brought the imperial house
closer to the center of Japan's culture than it had ever been before. Hitherto,
for example, the average Japanese knew little about the Emperor, or about his
mythical claim to descent from the sun goddess.

The Meiji Restoration, a dramatic historical period, saw the creation of an
ideology from which the Japanese in important respects have scarcely budged.
Takashi Fujitani, a history professor at the University of California at San
Diego, writes, in his book Splendid Monarchy (1996), "The emperor and
his family continue to perform their ceremonials as if they were
traditional—somehow timeless and without a history—and in so doing erase the
memories of a past when national community was but the dream of a few." The
calculated manufacture of tradition is not uniquely Japanese. As the historian
David Cannadine has pointed out, only in the late nineteenth century did the
British monarchy resume staging splendid public spectacles; for quite some time
before that its rituals were clumsy and essentially private.

For Britain's monarchy the challenge is to symbolize the spirit of the
nation in a United Kingdom irrevocably beyond the Age of Empire. Japanese
courtiers face the task of conveying, through the imperial family's activities,
a binding ideal of Japanese nationhood that goes beyond the myth of unique
blood—a concept that is beginning to lose its appeal even within Japan. That
task would be daunting enough without the prevailing official culture of
diffidence and indirection.

Emperor Akihito's interviews and press conferences are formal, staid affairs,
and his speeches are almost entirely written for him by courtiers and cabinet
members. A talk with Makoto Watanabe is one of the few ways of gaining insight
into Akihito's mind, and even this route is oddly circuitous, lined with
confusing road signs, and studded with dead ends. And yet Watanabe would argue,
with some justification, that Akihito chafes at being dictated to and in fact
asserts himself on certain issues. Shortly after Emperor Hirohito died, in
1989, Akihito made a point of clearly articulating his support for the present
Japanese constitution—a subtle rebuke to Japan's extreme right-wing activists,
who assume that Hirohito never really liked this American-crafted document.
(Hirohito did have his reservations. He wanted to be consulted, to encourage,
and to warn, in the manner of the British monarchy.)

Akihito has edged delicately toward controversy in other ways. In 1990, when
Hitoshi Motoshima, the mayor of Nagasaki, was shot by fanatics for suggesting
that Hirohito was partly responsible for the behavior of the Japanese military
during the Second World War, Akihito visited the mayor and conveyed his
sympathy. Akihito has also demonstrated some initiative in the matter of the
Japanese island of Okinawa. His father was never welcome there. Okinawans felt
betrayed by Hirohito, and held him responsible for the island's wartime
devastation and for encouraging the United States to prolong its postwar
occupation. Akihito, however, has shown interest in the poetry of Okinawa and
has made several trips to the island, despite being attacked by a firebomber on
one occasion.

Hiroshi Takahashi, a journalist and perhaps the most knowledgeable chronicler
of the Japanese throne, credits Akihito personally for sharpening and deepening
the public expression of Japanese remorse for Japan's ravaging of China and its
people during the Second World War. This expression, uttered in the course of
Akihito's visit to China in 1992, was particularly controversial, because
conservatives did not want the Emperor to apologize to the Chinese at all, and
they lobbied the Diet to dilute his speeches. Nobody at the palace will confirm
Takahashi's claim, though Watanabe will say that the Emperor makes some
editorial changes to the remarks he delivers, seizing opportunities to speak
his own mind.

But such gestures, and much else of what the Emperor does, may be too subtle
for the average harried citizen to grasp. Many Japanese regard Akihito as bland
in comparison with his charismatic father. And the truth is that many of the
Emperor's duties are nothing but symbolic drudgery—attesting the appointment
of ambassadors and ministers, putting his seal on documents from the cabinet.
Every year in early summer the Emperor plants rice at the palace paddy, and the
Empress goes off to cultivate silk at the imperial silkworm nursery. "This is a
nice tradition," one courtier says, "but Japan's silk industry is pretty much
gone, and the number of rice farmers is rapidly shrinking. And Japan's computer
industry doesn't need encouragement from the imperial family."

Some Japanese believe that the seeming reticence of the throne is a deliberate
choice of the Emperor's advisers. No doubt this is true to some extent, but a
good part of the perceived reticence is due simply to inertia. A friend who
once worked at the palace told me that it took him a full year to negotiate
access to files he needed in order to complete the task for which he had been
hired. "The apathy is extraordinary," he recalled. Like Watanabe, most senior
officials at the palace come from one of the ministries, many on a short-term
basis. The ostensible purpose of this system, which reflects pre-war patterns,
is to keep the palace well connected and well informed. But it no longer works.
In pre-war times a stint at the palace carried prestige. Today many regard the
assignment as an unwelcome diversion from their careers. Understanding little
about the imperial system, the temporary courtiers cling blindly to precedent
so as not to make some terrible mistake. There are, of course, exceptions. One
I met was Tokumitsu Murakami, a director at the Imperial Household Agency,
whose bookshelves were filled with volumes on the imperial system written by
both left- and right-wing scholars—part of his determined effort to understand
what is going on. "It's nice that he's trying," said one Japanese journalist
who covers the court. "But he'll be gone soon." Indeed, Murakami recently left
the palace's employ.

Taking the notion of imperial impartiality to paralyzing extremes, courtiers
rarely seize what might seem like obvious opportunities. After the 1995 Kobe
earthquake many volunteer groups formed to help the victims. One adviser
suggested dispatching the Crown Prince and Princess to pitch in as a show of
support. But the idea was abandoned out of fear of possible criticism for
favoring one group over another.

Last year, after the death of Princess Diana, I watched with great interest to
see how Britain's royal minders would deal with the public call for the palace
to break with protocol and lower flags to half mast, and for the Queen to
openly exhibit grief. I was astonished by the rapid and coherent articulation
of public opinion and the speed of the throne's reply. Had Japan's Imperial
Household Agency been confronted with a similar challenge (not that the
Japanese public would ever have been so forward), it probably would have taken
the courtiers weeks to overcome infighting, passivity, and the meddling of
interest groups.

Another front on which the palace seems to have stalled indecisively
involves Princess Masako. Many Japanese expected that she would play a role
somewhat comparable to Princess Diana's, and that she would breathe new life
into Japan's royal house. This has not happened, and there has been a torrent
of press commentary, in Japan and also in the West, questioning why Masako has
not assumed a less traditional position. Courtiers have been accused of
stifling her ambitions—an understandable accusation in view of history. Japan
countenanced eight Empresses among its rulers from 593 to 1771, but after the
Meiji Restoration, as noted, the monarchy became a male preserve. Basing their
practice on a study of Western models, the Japanese also made royal women
conform to roles as wives, mothers, and facilitators of charitable work. By the
1930s palace courtiers were increasingly emphasizing the Emperor's divine
status, and the Empress had become even less of a public figure and even more
purely a biological vessel for ensuring the continuation of the imperial line.

When I first asked courtiers about Masako, two years ago, they were still
sorting out their thoughts. "I don't understand what reporters mean by
'active,'" said the grand master of the Crown Prince's household, Kiyoshi
Furukawa. "She's very active. She already has a busy schedule. If we didn't
refuse requests, she'd have no private time." Together with the Crown Prince,
Masako visits old-age homes, attends sporting events for the disabled, greets
foreign guests, and occasionally makes trips overseas. However, these are the
same sorts of activities that Empress Michiko performed when she was the Crown
Princess. Masako is seen as little more than a demure extension of her husband.
Furukawa had no problem with that: "The main function of the Crown Princess is
to support the Crown Prince."

More-recent conversations with courtiers indicate that they realize that a
good part of the public wants to see Masako as a spontaneous modern woman with
a meaningful public life. "I'm hoping that after a certain period of time she
will find a way to express herself," Watanabe says. Another senior courtier
agrees. "Women in Japan certainly expect this, and if she doesn't, people may
lose interest in her," he told me. Of course, they may lose interest anyway.
The less prescribed and more spontaneous the job of being a royal figure
becomes, the more importance individual personality assumes. But will the
people like what they see up close? The fact is, Masako seems to be rather
conservative and deliberative, not the free spirit or the boat rocker that some
members of the public seem to think. "The media created an overblown image of
Princess Masako as the young, aggressive career woman," Watanabe says. "She's
very intelligent, but she is also more of a follower." Watanabe dismisses the
notion that palace traditionalists have been cramping her style, insisting that
her orthodox clothes—the trim suits, hemmed to the knee, and matching hats,
often in sweet pastel colors—are her own choice. One fellow student at Oxford
recalls, "Masako was very much the traditional Japanese woman, unlikely to take
initiative or stick her neck out."

The Imperial Household Agency, of course, hardly operates in a vacuum.
Politicians and interest groups weigh in. Particularly important is the
Association of Shinto Shrines, a little-known but powerful right-wing
organization that represents some 20,000 Shinto priests and 80,000 Shinto
shrines.

Under Japan's postwar constitution, religion and the government are strictly
separate. Although the imperial family practices Shinto in private, Shinto is
no longer Japan's official religion. The association, however, continues to
work assiduously for a return to a national polity based firmly on Shinto
thought, and with the Emperor firmly at its center. It prints leaflets about
ways to preserve or enhance imperial dignity. When it doesn't like something
that the palace is doing, it complains directly or through pliant politicians,
of whom there is no dearth. Not all the association's causes are religious;
some are merely nationalist. For instance, it successfully fought to water down
a 1995 resolution condemning Japan's wartime aggression.

Courtiers do not like to admit it, but the association can be good at getting
its way. Consider the nocturnal Shinto rite known as the Daijosai, in which a
new Emperor, as part of his enthronement, communes with the sun goddess. The
Imperial Household Agency might well have abbreviated this rite for Akihito's
accession were it not for the lobbying efforts of the association. The group is
said to have reservations about Akihito, because it feels he is too Westernized
and too humanized. "We do not generally approve of the Emperor traveling
overseas," says Masao Sugitani, a representative of the association. "The
Emperor's primary job is to pray."

Despite claims to an influential and venerable past, for much of its history
Shinto was simply a local cult in Japan. Before the Meiji Restoration the
imperial house was mainly Buddhist. But the nineteenth-century reformers
decided that Buddhism, a Chinese and Korean import, was unsuitable in the new
Japan. Shinto, in contrast, was a homegrown religion. To be sure, some of the
Meiji reformers had their doubts about elevating Shinto to be the state
religion. Shinto, wrote Yukichi Fukuzawa, a distinguished intellectual of the
era, "is only an insignificant movement trying to make headway by taking
advantage of the imperial house at a time of political change." After the
Second World War and the abolition of state support for religion, the
Shintoists were determined not to lapse into obscurity. Leaders of major
pre-war Shinto organizations banded together in 1946 to found the association.
Today courtiers fear that some of the association's stances could provoke a
backlash against the monarchy; however, according to Ken Ruoff, the author of a
forthcoming book on the Japanese throne, they also appreciate the association's
role as a defender of the imperial institution.

Given that prayer has been central to the Emperor's identity, the separation of
Church and State in Japan is in many ways paradoxical. For most of the
monarchy's history the Emperor's work consisted largely of priestly chores. On
the first of every month, and at least twenty other times during the year,
Akihito offers prayers at the palace shrines. And yet Shinto ritualists are
technically not on the palace payroll. They are paid directly (and rather
poorly, I'm told) by the Emperor himself, a bookkeeping fudge so that they are
not classified as civil servants.

The presence of Shinto ritualists in the palace unnerves some Japanese. "Why
does the Imperial Household Agency continue stubbornly to treat the Emperor as
a descendant of the gods?" one Japanese magazine asked not long ago. The
article reminded readers that despite all the exotic present-day
trappings—including the presence of young, unmarried Shinto priestesses on the
palace grounds, adhering strictly to a regime of sexual purity—Shinto rituals
have not always been the only ones practiced by the royal family. In the view
of some courtiers, Shinto ritual is hardly indispensable—a sentiment that the
association has not failed to register. "You have to keep an eye on the
Imperial Household Agency," Sugitani warns. He worries that courtiers, in their
eagerness to avoid controversy, might simplify or eliminate certain rituals.

I asked Watanabe about situations in which the separation of Church and State
seems to have been violated. For example, palace chamberlains, who are civil
servants, regularly make visits to Shinto shrines in lieu of the Emperor. Also
twice a year the Prime Minister and cabinet members attend rites for the
imperial ancestors at the palace Shinto shrines. "We believe that attendance of
these people [politicians] adds weight to those events, but we are not forcing
them to come," Watanabe explained.

When Emperor Akihito prays, I asked another senior courtier, does he think of
himself as a direct offspring of the sun goddess? (Hirohito, after the war,
refused to bow to U.S. pressure to renounce his claim to divine lineage, though
he did deny that he himself was a god.) The reply was deft: "In general terms
he considers ancestor worship very important. How much ancestry that includes,
I don't know." The courtier continued, "I believe His Majesty, being a modern
man, knows that the early part of imperial history belongs to myth." Why
doesn't the Emperor elucidate these myths as myths—a move that would
probably be welcomed by a certain segment of the public? "You, as an American,
can look at this very objectively," the courtier said. "But for many Japanese,
particularly those who are vocal, it is still very difficult to be objective
about these matters." Among other things, any reinterpretation would entail
looking at the role Shinto rituals played in contributing to the war, which
would reopen the whole question of the culpability of state Shinto and the
imperial system. Japan is not ready for such a history lesson. "In this
atmosphere what position can His Majesty take?" the courtier asked.

Takeshi Kasano, an archaeologist, struggles with a parallel set of
issues. Kasano is one of 150 full-time palace employees around the country who
research, guard, and repair the imperial tombs. Some of these graves are
clearly spurious and were manufactured by nineteenth-century royalists who
wanted evidence of an unbroken 2,000-year-old imperial line. Others are
authentic and important cultural treasures.

For years scholars unconnected with the royal family have begged the palace for
permission to investigate a number of imperial graves, especially ones dating
from the third century to the seventh century A.D. Japan's oldest surviving
written history dates back only to the eighth century, so the graves would
provide historians with vital information. What has already been learned about
the imperial past is tantalizing. Archaeologists have been able to explore
several sites thought to be royal or aristocratic mounds that have somehow
escaped modern imperial legal control. In one seventh-century tomb they
discovered Korean-style murals. In one sixth-century tomb they found artifacts
from China. Findings like these are suggestive of a complicated imperial
past—and they are at odds with the desire of the palace to cloak its origins
in mystery or in myth.

In recent years the Imperial Household Agency has allowed some carefully
controlled archaeological activity—for example, letting small groups of
archaeologists tour tomb sites briefly when the repair of moats and ramparts
was under way. But initiating major excavations purely in order to gain
knowledge has been prohibited on grounds of its intolerable invasiveness.

I met Kasano in the company of Satoshi Takishima, while he was still the chief
of the palace's tombs division. On the question of excavations Takishima
repeated the party line: "The imperial family worships at these tombs," he
said. "The most important thing is to maintain their quiet and dignity."
Takishima brushed aside talk of employing less-intrusive means of
archaeological exploration, such as radar and fiberscopes. Kasano is clearly
interested in such technology. Still, his face flushed as he spoke even
tentatively of such approaches to exploration, as if he suspected that the very
notion amounted to heresy. When I asked about the prospect of more excavations,
Kasano replied, "I have learned that science is not everything. There is a
place for myth and religion."

That point of view is publicly shared by many mainstream Japanese journalists,
who are similarly shy about undertaking too much excavation. On the second
floor of the Imperial Household Agency headquarters is a work space for palace
press-club members. All Japan's prestigious media outlets maintain palace
correspondents. Until recently no foreign news agencies were allowed; even now
they are excluded from many important conferences. The mainstream Japanese
journalists enjoy exclusive access to the frequent briefings given by agency
officials and also to the less regular press conferences of royal-family
members. The journalists not only obey news embargoes; they also prepare their
questions together, taking pains to avoid sensitive subjects. For one interview
with Princess Masako the journalists collectively decided not to ask anything
about her childbearing plans—the question obviously on everyone's mind.

However, Japan's tabloid magazines, which are not part of the official press
system and fear getting scooped by a more entrepreneurial Western press, play
by their own rules. (Some palace reporters, in fact, write anonymous articles
or leak tips to tabloid writers, out of friendship or in exchange for money or
drink.) Several months before the Princess Masako interview the Weekly
Shincho ran a story claiming that the Emperor was so worried about a
potentially scandalous dalliance on the part of Prince Akishino, involving a
woman in Thailand, that he had contracted a stress-related ailment. The article
went on to describe how Akishino's father-in-law had complained personally to
the Emperor. The Imperial Household Agency responded to this story with unusual
vigor. Tokumitsu Murakami, one of its directors, himself visited the offices of
the Weekly Shincho to demand a retraction. Instead the magazine ran a
follow-up article mocking the palace's efforts to rein in the press. Eventually
Prince Akishino felt compelled to answer the charges, using the occasion of a
traditional birthday press conference to deny that he had been unfaithful:
"Smoke has spread where there is absolutely no fire."

In 1881 Kencho Suematsu, a student at Cambridge University who later became a
prominent Japanese politician, began sending observations on the British
monarchy to Japan's imperial household minister. He warned against allowing the
imperial family to become too aloof, and he stressed the importance of creating
a human face for the Emperor. Suematsu was no doubt influenced by the
predicament of Queen Victoria, who faced an outburst of republicanism when she
withdrew from public life after the death of Prince Albert. Suematsu's reports
and other writings on the Western monarchies profoundly influenced the Japanese
as they sought to define their own modernized monarchy.

What lessons should the Japanese be learning now? One is that monarchies are at
risk when they are perceived as holding society back. English republicans argue
today that the Queen upholds outdated values in a new Britain, and that she
represents the pinnacle of a social hierarchy that needs to be dismantled.
Emperor Akihito may himself be a committed internationalist, but imperial
rituals perpetuate the notion of Japan as a sacred community holding itself
apart from the world—clearly not the optimal stance for a nation with
extensive trade and investment interests overseas. The Emperor has ample
resources to craft a new message. He could highlight Chinese and Korean
influences on court culture as a reminder that even the most Japanese of
institutions is indebted to Japan's neighbors. He could release documents
relating to the Second World War in order to show respect for the ordeal and
painful memories of other nations. Such gestures would be likely to offend
conservatives at home, of course. But the conservatives are the past, not the
future.

Another lesson is that social expectations change. A great deal has been
written about the emotional reserve of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles in a
more expressive Britain. Behavioral conventions of a different kind may be
changing in Japan. Increasingly, the person who is perceived as the most
capable wins, and laggards are quietly shown the door. Deference to established
hierarchy and the status quo is no longer automatic. (Nobuyuki Idei, the
current president of Sony, was by no means the conventional choice for the job,
which he was given in preference to fourteen higher-ranking executives.) With
their lives and livelihoods under increasing pressure, the Japanese may come to
find the loose accountability of the palace repugnant.

A final lesson involves the durability of history. Aside from a small number of
rightist supporters and left-wing opponents, most Japanese appear to have
extremely ambiguous feelings toward the monarchy. For some courtiers and
Japanese in general the quandary is the same: They are torn about the
monarchy's past, its role during the Second World War, and its association with
racial myths that fueled Japan's aggression. Few people in the middle find that
they can speak with confidence about this institution. The story of Japan's
monarchy is about the price of unsettled history.

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After a year of uncertainty and unhappiness, the president is reportedly feeling more comfortable—but has he really mastered the job?

It was a fun weekend for Donald Trump. Late on Friday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired Andrew McCabe, the outgoing FBI deputy director whom Trump had long targeted, and the president spent the rest of the weekend taking victory laps: cheering McCabe’s departure, taking shots at his former boss and mentor James Comey, and renewing his barrage against Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Trump’s moods shift quickly, but over the last week or so, a different overarching feel has manifested itself, a meta-mood. Although he remains irritated by Mueller and any number of other things, Trump seems to be relishing the latest sound of chaos, “leaning into the maelstrom,” as McKay Coppins put it Friday. This is rooted, Maggie Haberman reports, in a growing confidence on the president’s part: “A dozen people close to Mr. Trump or the White House, including current and former aides and longtime friends, described him as newly emboldened to say what he really feels and to ignore the cautions of those around him.”

Invented centuries ago in France, the bidet has never taken off in the States. That might be changing.

“It’s been completely Americanized!” my host declares proudly. “The bidet is gone!” In my time as a travel editor, this scenario has become common when touring improvements to hotels and resorts around the world. My heart sinks when I hear it. To me, this doesn’t feel like progress, but prejudice.

Americans seem especially baffled by these basins. Even seasoned American travelers are unsure of their purpose: One globe-trotter asked me, “Why do the bathrooms in this hotel have both toilets and urinals?” And even if they understand the bidet’s function, Americans often fail to see its appeal. Attempts to popularize the bidet in the United States have failed before, but recent efforts continue—and perhaps they might even succeed in bringing this Old World device to new backsides.

How evangelicals, once culturally confident, became an anxious minority seeking political protection from the least traditionally religious president in living memory

One of the most extraordinary things about our current politics—really, one of the most extraordinary developments of recent political history—is the loyal adherence of religious conservatives to Donald Trump. The president won four-fifths of the votes of white evangelical Christians. This was a higher level of support than either Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, an outspoken evangelical himself, ever received.

Trump’s background and beliefs could hardly be more incompatible with traditional Christian models of life and leadership. Trump’s past political stances (he once supported the right to partial-birth abortion), his character (he has bragged about sexually assaulting women), and even his language (he introduced the words pussy and shithole into presidential discourse) would more naturally lead religious conservatives toward exorcism than alliance. This is a man who has cruelly publicized his infidelities, made disturbing sexual comments about his elder daughter, and boasted about the size of his penis on the debate stage. His lawyer reportedly arranged a $130,000 payment to a porn star to dissuade her from disclosing an alleged affair. Yet religious conservatives who once blanched at PG-13 public standards now yawn at such NC-17 maneuvers. We are a long way from The Book of Virtues.

A new six-part Netflix documentary is a stunning dive into a utopian religious community in Oregon that descended into darkness.

To describe Wild Wild Country as jaw-dropping is to understate the number of times my mouth gaped while watching the series, a six-part Netflix documentary about a religious community in Oregon in the 1980s. It’s ostensibly the story of how a group led by the dynamic Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh purchased 64,000 acres of land in central Oregon in a bid to build its own utopian city. But, as the series immediately reveals, the narrative becomes darker and stranger than you might ever imagine. It’s a tale that mines the weirdness of the counterculture in the ’70s and ’80s, the age-old conflict between rural Americans and free love–preaching cityfolk, and the emotional vacuum that compels people to interpret a bearded mystic as something akin to a god.

Among the more practical advice that can be offered to international travelers is wisdom of the bathroom. So let me say, as someone who recently returned from China, that you should be prepared to one, carry your own toilet paper and two, practice your squat.

I do not mean those goofy chairless sits you see at the gym. No, toned glutes will not save you here. I mean the deep squat, where you plop your butt down as far as it can go while staying aloft and balanced on the heels. This position—in contrast to deep squatting on your toes as most Americans naturally attempt instead—is so stable that people in China can hold it for minutes and perhaps even hours ...

As the Trump presidency approaches a troubling tipping point, it’s time to find the right term for what’s happening to democracy.

Here is something that, even on its own, is astonishing: The president of the United States demanded the firing of the former FBI deputy director, a career civil servant, after tormenting him both publicly and privately—and it worked.

The American public still doesn’t know in any detail what Andrew McCabe, who was dismissed late Friday night, is supposed to have done. But citizens can see exactly what Donald Trump did to McCabe. And the president’s actions are corroding the independence that a healthy constitutional democracy needs in its law enforcement and intelligence apparatus.

McCabe’s firing is part of a pattern. It follows the summary removal of the previous FBI director and comes amid Trump’s repeated threats to fire the attorney general, the deputy attorney, and the special counsel who is investigating him and his associates. McCabe’s ouster unfolded against a chaotic political backdrop that includes Trump’s repeated calls for investigations of his political opponents, demands of loyalty from senior law-enforcement officials, and declarations that the job of those officials is to protect him from investigation.

The first female speaker of the House has become the most effec­tive congressional leader of modern times—and, not coinciden­tally, the most vilified.

Last May, TheWashington Post’s James Hohmann noted “an uncovered dynamic” that helped explain the GOP’s failure to repeal Obamacare. Three current Democratic House members had opposed the Affordable Care Act when it first passed. Twelve Democratic House members represent districts that Donald Trump won. Yet none voted for repeal. The “uncovered dynamic,” Hohmann suggested, was Nancy Pelosi’s skill at keeping her party in line.

She’s been keeping it in line for more than a decade. In 2005, George W. Bush launched his second presidential term with an aggressive push to partially privatize Social Security. For nine months, Republicans demanded that Democrats admit the retirement system was in crisis and offer their own program to change it. Pelosi refused. Democratic members of Congress hosted more than 1,000 town-hall meetings to rally opposition to privatization. That fall, Republicans backed down, and Bush’s second term never recovered.

For years, the restaurateur played a jerk with a heart of gold. Now, he’s the latest celebrity chef to be accused of sexual harassment.

“There’s no way—no offense—but a girl shouldn’t be at the same level that I am.”

That was Mike Isabella, celebrity chef and successful restaurateur, making his debut on the show that would make him famous. Bravo’s Top Chef, to kick off its Las Vegas–set Season 6, had pitted its new group of contestants against each other in a mise-en-place relay race; Isabella, shucking clams, had looked over and realized to his great indignation that Jen Carroll, a sous chef at New York’s iconic Le Bernardin, was doing the work more quickly than he was.

Top Chef is a simmering stew of a show—one that blends the pragmatic testing of culinary artistry with reality-TV sugar and reality-TV spice—and Isabella quickly established himself as Season 6’s pseudo-villain: swaggering, macho, quick to anger, and extremely happy to insult his fellow contestants, including Carroll and, soon thereafter, Robin Leventhal (a self-taught chef and cancer survivor). Isabella was a villain, however, who was also, occasionally, self-effacing. A little bit bumbling. Aw, shucks, quite literally. He would later explain, of the “same level” comment:

Congressional Republicans and conservative pundits had the chance to signal to Trump that his attacks on law enforcement are unacceptable—but they sent the opposite message.

President Trump raged at his TV on Sunday morning. And yet on balance, he had a pretty good weekend. He got a measure of revenge upon the hated FBI, firing former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe two days before his pension vested. He successfully coerced his balky attorney general, Jeff Sessions, into speeding up the FBI’s processes to enable the firing before McCabe’s retirement date.

Beyond this vindictive fun for the president, he achieved something politically important. The Trump administration is offering a not very convincing story about the McCabe firing. It is insisting that the decision was taken internally by the Department of Justice, and that the president’s repeated and emphatic demands—public and private—had nothing whatsoever to do with it.